


The Time After the First Time

by apollos



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Emotional Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Falling In Love, Porn With Plot, Seasons 2 Spoilers, Sexual Tension, Smut, sweat kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-26 06:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12551700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: This is a love like no other.The first time Nancy and Jonathan have sex after the gate closes and all the emotions and realizations that come along with it.





	The Time After the First Time

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so happy this is canon you guys........
> 
> anyway this is like...really porny but hopefully in a good way! and a believable way! i also fully acknowledge that the first part of this fic is kind of rushed, but i didn't really feel like doing too much with the actual plot of the show, because a) i'm just here to offer some juicy jancy smut and emotions and b) if i leave it vague enough i hope that this will stand up well.

As to be expected, the drive back from Hopper's cabin to the Byers house was quiet, the air in the car thick as fog. But while Joyce held Will in the backseat, both floating between wakefulness and sleep and occasionally whispering something to the other, all Nancy could do was catch glances of Jonathan in quick little instances. Like catching fireflies in a jar. He looked so  _good_ in his damp sweatshirt, and she kept wondering why he didn't just take it off, for certainly he must be hot, and it was perfectly acceptable for men to go shirtless, wasn't it? She'd seen him shirtless; he had a few large freckles on his side that she could fit her fingertips over in a perfect line. She wanted to swipe his bangs from his forehead and then lick his sweat off her fingers, a thought both horrifying and arousing that would not leave her mind, and she had her legs crossed and jiggling. Somewhere in the mess, she thought, her emotions must have overloaded, her brain must've fried a gasket, and her body's response to the distress was to fill her with hormones, with a desire for the most primal human experience to ground herself again and against. For while attraction to Jonathan was not new or unfound, this level of desperation, of insanity, she felt, certainly was. This is what her mother and father had told her boys would be like: always horny, always scheming to get into her pants, and now all she could think about was unzipping Jonathan's jeans right there in the front seat, in front of his mother and brother, and she felt sick, felt like a pervert, and entirely too hot in her sweater. Jonathan's car did not have working air conditioning.

The windows were cracked, though, and halfway between the destinations she unrolled hers fully and stuck her head out. The cool air on her face felt like a slap, but a  _good_  slap. A  _needed_ slap.

They arrived back at the Byers residence to an empty house, and the tension in the air spun itself into palpable fervor. Jonathan scooped Will up and hurried him inside, depositing him on the couch, while Joyce looked at Nancy on the porch and said, "Where the  _fuck_ are they?"

Nancy sighed. She felt like she had a storm inside her head, and she wanted to sleep, after a nice round of something she couldn't exactly express her desire for in the moment. "Knowing my brother and his friends, they probably went off to do something stupid. But helpful."

Nancy was proven right when just a few moments later an unfamiliar car pulled in the driveway and the ragtag group of runts he'd been put in charge of poured out of it. After looking in that vicinity for a while, she realized the car was the new guy's, Billy's. This was confirmed when Jonathan reentered the scene with a drugged-looking Billy slung across his shoulders.

"He says you did this to him," Jonathan said to Steve. Nancy then noticed that Steve seemed badly banged up, bleeding and bruised in several places, as Jonathan handed Billy to him like an exchange of a sack of potatoes in a grocery store. "So you can handle him."

Steve pushed Billy away; Billy swayed on his feet, then fell squarely on his ass. The kids laughed at this, but everybody older than thirteen just looked at each other, beyond exhausted.

It was decided—largely without words—that Mike and Nancy would stay at the Byers residence. Billy left with Max, and Jonathan was tasked with taking the other three (including Steve) to their respective homes. Nancy thought about going with him, but she wasn't very keen on getting back in a car, and she thought she should probably be here for Mike. He was sat on the couch staring at the door, and Nancy knew he was waiting for another dramatic entrance from Eleven.

"She'll be fine," Nancy said, going to sit on the couch with him after seeing Jonathan off. Joyce and Will had retreated to Will's bedroom. "She's tough."

"I know she is," Mike said, snappy in his response. Where she would normally roll her eyes, she figured she could give him a break this time. "I'm not worried. I'll just feel better when I see her, is all."

"Do you think Hopper will come back here?"

"He fucking better," Mike said, and Nancy cringed a little. She wanted to chastise her baby brother for using that type of language, but she supposed that would be ridiculous. Instead, she put an arm around him and pulled him to her. The last time they had hugged—or even spoken much at all—had been when this all initially went down a year ago. Mike was stiff and unresponsive, but he did not move.

They both fell into a kind of thin sleep on the couch, separating so that they could curl up on the opposite ends. Nancy had strange, floating dreams, mostly Murray saying cryptic things and Nancy trying to figure out how to apply them to her life. And in the background, there was Jonathan, wearing his pajamas and looking at her like he expected something. When she woke it actually  _was_ to Jonathan, in his pajamas, looking at her not like he wanted something, but with fondness and honesty.

She looked towards Mike—he was still asleep. Nancy brought a finger to her lips and rose from the couch. They walked down the hallway, and then into Jonathan's bedroom. She closed the door behind them and then they just stood there, looking at each other. Nancy's head still felt heavy, somehow twice its size and entirely too small, and her mouth tasted bad from the nap. She wondered if he could smell it; she wondered if he cared. They had kissed the morning after they'd slept together, lazily, exploratively. Lovingly.

"Has she come back yet?" Nancy whispered.

Jonathan shook his head. "It hasn't even been an hour," he whispered back. They were standing close but not touching, except for the fine hair on their arms. "I just got back and took a shower."

She looked down at herself, realizing that she felt sticky and disgusting. "Mike and I should go home," she said. "My parents are probably worried, and I need a change of clothes. Why would they come back here, anyway?"

"To let us know everything is safe?"

"But we can  _feel_ it," she said. "You feel it, right? That everything's safe? That we can rest?"

Jonathan looked at her, then at the ceiling, and then back to her. His fingers grazed her wrist, and then took ahold fully, and she felt herself ready to be kissed. Impatient, and even hungry, she reached up, pressing their lips together.

But the kiss was chaste and short, and he pulled back and wrapped his arms around her. "You do need that shower. You're kind of gross," he said, apologetically.

She pressed her head in the nook between his neck and shoulder to keep herself from laughing. He smelled like soap, but there was a deeper undercurrent, something very earthy, that made her keep her head there as she said. "Do you want to hear something  _really_ gross?"

"I don't know, do I?"

"When we were driving home, I kept wanting to lick your sweat off you," she said. It was easier to say this with her face hidden from him, though she had the strange feeling she would receive no judgement. It was possibly—no, it was  _definitely_ —the weirdest, most uncouth thing she had ever said out loud, and she startled when she felt him move against her. A reaction. She thought back to  _that_ night, and the same way he had moved against her when they kissed outside the door, and what that lead to. She wanted very much in the present moment to slide her hands between them, but she had the feeling that this was not the direction this conversation was going to take.

"That's, uh." Jonathan was saying, while Nancy's mind was racing, and he didn't get much farther. Instead he laughed a little into her hair.

Of course, they heard the front door open at that moment. They separated from each other slowly, looking at each other in a way Nancy couldn't find words for, and then they made their way out.

It was just Hopper, his truck parked outside and still on. It was too dark to see clearly, but it did seem that Eleven was slumped in the passenger seat. Joyce was standing by Hopper, her arms halfway extended towards him, as if she had gone in for a hug and then stopped herself. Hopper looked tired; there was blood on his shirt. Mike had woken up, and was moving towards Hopper, slowly as if he were still asleep.

"She closed it," he said, holding his hat against his stomach. "But she's tired. She needs rest." She directed this towards Mike.

"Of course," Joyce said.

"I would have called, but we broke the phone." This was directed at Nancy. Jonathan looked at her, too, smirking; she pinched his side, smiling at Hopper in a way she hoped came off as apologetic and not smug.

"Yes," Joyce said, again. "I'll have to get a new one—"

"I'll pay for it," Nancy offered. "Since I broke it."

"Oh, you really don't have to do that, sweetheart," Joyce said.

"No, it's the least that I can do." Nancy felt that that statement was sort of ridiculous—she had saved this woman's son just about an hour and a half ago—but it felt like the right thing to say. Or more aptly, it felt like they were all stuck acting out parts in a play, their real selves stashed away for the moment. Jonathan's hand brushed against Nancy's, purposefully.

Hopper made a sound deep in his throat. "I need to get going."

"When can I see her?" Mike asked. He raised a hand to bat away sleep from his eyes; he looked so  _young_ in that moment that it made Nancy want to retreat back into the safe farce of their badly acted play. But he will see her, she told herself.

"I don't know, kid. Soon." Hopper made a face. "I mean, after she's better. Look, I'll call." He said this to Joyce, putting his hat back on, and Joyce nodded. He wasn't even out the door before she went to move once more down the hall, presumably towards Will's room. Nancy called her name, stopping her.

"I think we should go home, now, Mrs. Byers," Nancy said, looking between her and Mike. "We all need to sleep in our own beds."

"I'll drive them," Jonathan said, already moving to put on his coat and shoes.

"That sounds good," Joyce said. "I'm going to go back to Will."

And so Nancy once more found herself in a car, though this time she was in the backseat with Mike, who had willingly slumped against her. Her arousal had largely disappeared, likely due to both the literal and metaphorical appearance of her brother between her and Jonathan. Still, though, she didn't quite want to leave him, and when he dropped them off she leaned down and into the driver's seat to kiss him, her eyes closing in a way that almost felt like sleep. Mike cleared his throat behind her after a few seconds, though, and they went towards their house, Nancy looking over her shoulder at Jonathan in his car the whole time.

He did not leave until they had walked inside, the door shut behind them. Nancy watched him go through the living room window while their mother started into a spiel.

She did not have a chance to be alone with Jonathan again for a few more days, and that was when she invited him back to her house after things had settled enough. It was a Friday, a chilly Friday that had her seeing her breath and rubbing her hands together to keep them warm. She still felt exhausted and uneasy, like walking around after spending years at sea, but the prospect of seeing Jonathan again filled her with a buzz that spread from head to toe. They had seen each other at school, and talked, and even kissed a few times in tentative swipes, but she  _needed_ him, all of him, and she needed to feel him securely in her arms and know that he was hers, that she could call him her boyfriend, however banal of a term that might be. Then, she thought, she would know. She would know that she had entered the next part of her life. In the meantime, she had been ghosting around the house, doing her schoolwork, seeing his face in her mind's eye constantly, the smirk that he had given her after he pinched her.

He ate dinner with her family and then they retreated into her room, her parents apparently no longer giving a damn about the sex their daughter was or was not having. Perhaps they didn't see Jonathan as a threat. Nancy would think it over later, but for now, she just wanted to be with him in her favorite place, her safest place, her bedroom.

"Jonathan," she said, when he closed the door behind them. He did it without making a sound, he did it with care, just like he did everything else.

"Nancy," he said, and he smiled.

She sat on the bed and patted the space beside her.

He took it, still smiling, his fingers laced together in his lap.

"Look—" he started, just as she said, "I missed you."

"You missed me?" He looked up at her.

"Well, it's just. We spent all that time together, I was sort of used to having you around."

He was quiet, looking at her with his head cocked a little. "I missed you, too," he said, at last. "I guess I'm just waiting for things to get back to normal."

She scoffed, though not at him, and she knew he knew that. " _Normal?_ Jonathan, things haven't been normal for a year. They're never going to be normal again." She placed a hand over one of his. "And that's okay," she said, more quietly. "This can be our new normal."

"It's just—I feel so  _tense._ I shouldn't, right? I should feel relieved. The thing's gone. But I feel like I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop. For something else bad to happen. It's so stupid." He put his head in his hands and leaned forward on the bed.

"It's not stupid," she said, softly. "I mean, we thought things were okay before and they weren't, right? So it makes sense. But the gate's closed. It's over, for real."

"I want to believe you," Jonathan said, sounding pained. "And maybe I will if we can get through these next few weeks without incident. But until then…I just feel like I have this big lump of worry in my chest. God, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be telling you this."

"I want you to tell me this. I want to be able to tell each other everything." She rubbed a thumb over his hand, over the tendons.

"You're it," Jonathan said, laughing a sad little laugh. "You're who I can talk to this about."

"I'm upset too, you know." She stroked his hair, now. It was so smooth; it had to be natural, his brother had it, and she couldn't see the two of them sharing a haircare routine as elaborate as Steve's in the morning. "But I feel more like my brain's three sizes too big for my head and somebody deflated my lungs."

"I don't want you to feel that way," he said.  
"And I don't want you to feel how you feel, either. I could help you relax," she said, placing the hand that had been on his instead on his shoulder. She hoped she sounded seductive, but she knew her voice sounded as she felt: tired, thin, drained. Jonathan felt so solid, though, even through his sweater and jacket. Solid, warm and calming, like those bubble baths her mother always drew for her when she was upset.

"You don't have to do this, you know." He spoke so softly, even more so than usual, and she felt her heart take a violent fall when he took his hands from his face to look at her. She knew, then, that she was in love. In deep love.

"What do you mean?"

"That night. At Murray's." He groaned, and when he went to put his head back in his hands she stopped him, holding his wrist. "We had too much to drink, and we were stressed, and—"

" _Jonathan_ ," she said. She let go of his wrists and wrapped both arms around him now, fully. "Jonathan. No. You know…don't you remember what we talked about in the motel room? I want you, I've wanted you for a while."

"I don't know," Jonathan said. He sounded so distressed; her heart had still not returned to its normal resting spot, and his voice was keeping it pressed down somewhere in her sternum. "You know, you just broke up with Steve, and all this shit started going down again. I'm just saying—maybe you only think you feel what you feel because I'm. Familiar. Or because I've been through it, too."

"Do you think that's why you feel how you feel about me?" she said, asking it as plainly as she could. She knew the answers, she knew this was a conversation they needed to have but not one that she wanted to, because right now all she wanted to do was get naked and get under the covers and hold him, not even have sex, just holdhim, and feel him, and love him.

"Well, no." He groaned again.

"Jonathan," she said again. "I love you."

"You can't say that." He drew back and looked at her. "You can't just say that, not yet."

"But it's  _true_." She took his hands in his; she had to touch him, had to, had to feel him and his solid warmth, or she felt like she would lose him forever. "What do you mean, not yet? It's been a year."

"You haven't loved me for a year." Then: "You were with Steve."

Nancy sighed. "Maybe not  _love_ ," she said, rolling the word around with her tongue, "but I was thinking about you, always. Sometimes, with Steve, I would think, I wonder what Jonathan's doing now? And I would feel so bad. I would think about you in your bed. I would think if you were thinking of me." She closed her eyes. What she said was true—she was thinking about him, all the time, but she was also thinking about Barb, already feeling so guilty, it was easy to bury those feelings. To excuse them away. But with hindsight, she saw them for what they were. And she thought about the stake that would drive itself through her chest every time she caught Jonathan looking at her, or even looking off into the distance like he was thinking of something so  _deep_ , or even when he crossed his arms and his shoulders looked so broad, so strong.

"If I wasn't thinking about Will, I was thinking about you," Jonathan said, looking up at her like a sheepish child admitting they'd stayed up past their bedtime reading a comic book underneath the covers with a flashlight. "Of course I was, Nancy, goddammit. But—I just don't want to be a rebound. We both know how I feel about you. I just want you to be sure."

"I've never been so sure about anything in my life," Nancy said. "My first time with Steve, I was so hesitant, I thought about it forever, I didn't know if I wanted to. But with you—" her voice hitched in her throat. "I want it  _all_ ," she whispered. "I want you to kiss me, and I want you to tell me about your day, and I want to buy a house with you, and I want you to fuck me.  _Again_. And  _again_." She moved closer to him, practically whispering the last word. She watched his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he swallowed.

He was quiet, and they were suspended, and she knew this.

"I know you haven't had a real girlfriend before, so you wouldn't know. But I had Steve, and I  _do_ know. What I feel right now—it's what they write books about. It's what they write  _songs_ about. What we went through—the connection we have—even if we  _hadn't_  gone through that shit, we would probably still have it. We would just ignore it and we would hope it would go away, wouldn't we? And I would have just stayed with Steve and I would have become my parents, like you said. But with  _you_ —"

Jonathan turned his head and kissed her, full impact, and she made a little muffled yelp in surprise. This is what she remembered most about that night: how he kissed, so  _hungry_ , so  _desperate_ , that raw want and need she had never felt in somebody, ever. Not even Steve, who tended to treat her like something fragile that might break, a delicate lock he could pick with his tongue, or something. No, Jonathan carried no pretenses; Jonathan kissed with  _honesty_. He was so good at it, so naturally good, it struck her everywhere, it struck her over and over again, a million hot pokers jamming themselves into her skin. They kissed like they were talking, like they were reaffirming their existence and their existence with each other with each touch of their tongues, that they were real and they were present and they were connected.

She tugged at his jacket and he shrugged it off as he pressed her into her bed, and then she was opening her eyes and taking off his sweater, pressing her fingers into his freckles, and he was rolling her shirt up and leaning down to kiss the soft white skin of her belly, and she wrapped her hands in his hair and pushed him lower.

She had laughed during sex with Steve; she had enjoyed it. He was good at it, and he took care with her, and she came more often than not. And she knew it was possibly to have lovers before  _the_ lover, and to enjoy it, and the thing is that with Jonathan, she was having fun  _and_ she felt like she was being put back together when she hadn't even known she was broken, every goddamn time. She pushed her jeans down and he put his face against her thigh, nosing it, and he whispered so that she could feel his breath there, "You know, I've only ever seen this in porn," and she brought her fist to her mouth because she thought she would laugh the loudest she ever had. But also—her breath caught in her chest when he smiled up at her, and then when he hooked his fingers in her underwear, rolling them down painfully slowly. She'd worn the nice ones, the satin ones.

"God, Jonathan," she said, hoping he would know what she meant.

And of course, he did. He sat up, slipped her underwear over her feet, threw them behind him and lowered himself back down. He pushed towards her sweater and she pulled it off immediately. She wasn't wearing a bra, and his mouth went to her nipples immediately. She tugged on one of his hands and brought his fingers to her mouth, sucking on them to keep herself from screaming. He made a sort of growling sound and she felt herself sinking through the bed, clipping through the dimensions, her head spinning around and around. When she was about fourteen she had started to sneak her mother's romance novels and read them, red-faced and pdd;y excited, and then when she got a little older she thought they were ridiculous, and now she understood every single line in them fucking  _perfectly_ as Jonathan moved lower, lower, lower, and then his tongue connected with her clit, his fingers slipping out of his mouth so one hand could hold onto her thigh while the other worked the rest of her, in and out and in and out.

It took perhaps a minute before she came, reaching down to cement his head in place with her hands, moving her hips against him. She had experienced an orgasm like this once in her life, and though it had only occurred less than two weeks ago, she had missed it sorely. That time, he'd drawn it from her with just his fingers while he kissed her through it, whisperings things like  _you're so beautiful_ and  _I've dreamed of this, oh my God, Nancy, I've dreamed of this so much_ , and she had dug her nails into his back so hard that in the morning there were scratch marks.

He sat back on his knees and wiped his mouth—god, that was probably gross, but she'd already admitted her weird sweat thing, so really she just found it incredibly hot, wanted to wet his face herself some more—and went to unbuckle his belt.

"Is this okay?" he asked, a pant to his voice, his hair in his eyes, looking at her with the fattest pupils she'd ever seen.

She lifted herself up and stopped him.

"Let me," she said.

"If you want to." His voice cracked, and she felt heat already returning, a warm and liquid rush between her legs.

She brought his cock out of his pants like a sacred object, holding its heavy weight in her hands and looking up at him with wonder. He was already so fucking hard—surely he must have felt like this forever, because she knew she did. They had both carried their desire deep inside them. Steve had been circumcised, but Jonathan wasn't, and it made  _sense_ to her somehow, it added to his strange perfection. She moved her hands up and down, slowly at first as he had been with her, teasingly, until he was making this low type of needy rumble in the back of his throat that she wanted to wrap her hands around as well. It amazed her—this level of restraint he showed, when she knew she was being teasing, possibly being cruel. She held his balls in one hand and licked down the side of his shaft, once, twice, three times, before taking it into her mouth fully. She worked him until he was saying something incoherent—something that sounded vaguely like "gonna—" and then she pulled off, licking her lips and laying back, spreading her legs.

"Did you bring condoms?" she whispered, remembering to be quiet.

He nodded. "They're in my wallet," he said. "In my jacket." His jacket was somewhere on the floor.

"Then go get them," she suggested, judging his thigh with her foot.

He nodded, swallowing again, and stood up. He stepped fully out of his pants and she giggled a little, delirious, as he found his jacket and fished his wallet out. He got a condom and pulled it on himself with what looked to be shaking hands, and then practically pounced on the bed beside her, on all fours above her, kissing her once again. This time she  _did_ reach her hands down between them, grabbing ahold of his cock with determination.

"I didn't have those in there until after that night at Murray's," he said, his mouth somewhere against the side of her face. "I thought. I wanted to be prepared. The pullout  _sucked_." It had; he'd ended up coming on the bed, and he had volunteered to sleep in the wet spot.

She laughed. "I love that—I love that you tell me this stuff." She pulled him towards her and he got the idea, repositioning himself so he could enter her. "I love this. I love you. God, Jonathan, I love you so much." And though she had accepted it, and though she had realized it, something about saying it in this moment, with him pushing himself into her, hit her with severity. Here was this boy—this man, really—with who she did not have to watch herself, or explain herself, or temper herself. Who knew how to touch her, and how to listen to her, and how to protect her. Handsome; sensitive and soft yet sturdy and strong; a pure heart wrapped in thorny branches that she, too, knew how to pull back.

"I love you, too," he said, his voice so wrecked, his breath so humid, his hair tickling her face.

"Now fuck me as hard as you can," she whispered.

He complied, and again she marveled at his ability to do so: he fucked like he kissed, like he knew no other way how to, and that it never occurred to him there could  _be_ another way. When Jonathan let loose, he let loose, he spun her head, and she knew that they could do all the weird sex things they liked and nudge and purr at each other like cats in heat afterwards. Possibilities spread out in front of her, roads and roads and paths and paths, a future overwhelming in her desire for it—and knowledge she could  _have_ it. She lifted off the bed, hooked a leg around his back, finding the perfect angle. He grunted and snaked an arm underneath her back, the other propping himself up and curling her bedsheets, and she now she marveled at his strength, wondering where he got all these muscles, the taut ones in his shoulder especially. He seemed to realize they weren't kissing and remedied that—and all this combined, she felt another orgasm building up and then taking complete control of her, her first so far from penetration alone.

"Jesus Christ," he groaned, very obviously feeling her constrict around him. He responded in just a few more seconds, snapping his hips in a way that Nancy could feel it in her  _throat_ , a groan of her own bubbling up. He jerked in his own orgasm, in a way that would have pumped her so deliciously full if not for the condom, and then fell against her, slamming their bodies back to the bed. He was breathing so hard, she could hear it and feel it, and she rubbed her hands up his back and in his hair, congratulating him on a job well done.

"Please don't move yet," she said.

"I wasn't really thinking of it," he said.

"I love you."

"I love you—I love you  _so fucking much_."

"You're only saying that because I let you fuck me like that," she said, and it was a joke, and they both laughed. And it was strange—that is what everybody had warned her off, that's even what she had thought Steve had done at first, but with Jonathan it was a ludicrous idea. Love had come first, and it always would.

Eventually their sweat cooled and Jonathan disengaged, rolled onto his back beside her and pulled the condom off. He tied it with an intense look on his face that made her laugh, then dropped it in the trashcan beside her bed. "We'll need to remember to get that later," he said. "So your parents don't find out."

"Oh, them," Nancy said. She curled up onto Jonathan's bare chest, rubbing around his peck absentmindedly, wondering if she could get him hard again—she wanted him to finish in her mouth this time, she wanted to taste it. She also wanted to taste his sweat, and licked at his chest in curious swaths, not too disappointed when all she tasted was his soap and his earthiness. But these thoughts drifted as soon as they appeared, and her eyelids felt heavy, and he was pulling the comforter over them.

"Nancy, I just—I want this," Jonathan was saying, she realized. She opened her eyes and looked up at him. "I want you. I want you to, you know. I want this to be a relationship."

"You want me to be your girlfriend."

"Yeah." He looked down at her. "It seems kind of stupid, after all we've been through. That word."

"Well, I'm not really up for marriage yet, so I think it sounds just perfect." He laughed again; she loved making him laugh, she wished he would do it more. He needed it, all the laughter, all the love. "You're my boyfriend, and I'm your girlfriend, and we're not normal but we're in love. How does that sound?"

He considered his response. "About a year too late in the making."

"No." She rolled her head against his chest, ostensibly trying to shake it. "This is perfect. This is—the perfect time. It wouldn't have worked any other way."

"Yeah." He put his arm around her and pulled her closer to him, stroking her chest. She could feel his heartbeat against her face: steady and strong. "Perfect."

They slept for about an hour, cautious of needing to clean up and hide evidence. Yet when they woke they found they were ready to go again, and this time she  _did_ bring him off into her mouth, and he ate her out again, and they sat naked on the bed and just  _clung_ to each other, whispering into each other's hair their hopes and dreams and goals and aspirations and looking just the picture of perfection, she thought. Her only regret was that they could not literally spend the night together, could not sleep in each other's arms, and that he would eventually have to go home and she would be left alone. Alone but not empty—he had filled her—and waiting as patiently as possible.

They had slept together before, of course—both as in actual sleep and as in sex—but when Nancy would look back on the whole thing later, she would think of this as the first time. The perfect first time. What had come before with Steve had been fun; what had come before with Jonathan had been great, but had been elevated with this raw honesty that felt like she had been turned inside out, like her organs were on display, and that Jonathan knew how to turn her right side out again, knew every single part of her and always would, and she for him in return. And what would come after would build and build and build, an eternal climax. A once-in-a-lifetime type of love. A lifetime  _of_ love. An extraordinary thing, with an extraordinary man. They could fight monsters together; they had; they would; and in every kiss and every touch, in every quiet moment and every time they made each other laugh, they both felt it.


End file.
